A Better Excuse
by Mutant-Enemy-730
Summary: Pre-5x10. Minor Golly spoilers. Holly's unplanned planning of meeting Gail to talk about a case.


A/N: This is my first time posting in this fandom.

I have not really edited this, just wrote it mad fast. I'll do a proper edit tomorrow.

This is based off a tumblr prompt from gailpeckholly.

Disclaimer: No characters belong to me. I take no credit.

Minor spoilers for 5x10.

* * *

Holly leaned her head back against the back of the tub, shifting her elbow slightly to a more comfortable position to hold the phone to her ear, attempting to focus on what her friend was saying.

"Rachel, I'm too drunk right now to try to understand whatever metaphor that was."

An exasperated huff came from the other end of the line, "Fine. What did Rebound say was her reason for the two of you to break up?"

"Could you not call her that? That's terrible, and clichéd."

"Also true."

Holly opened her mouth to say something again, but shut it quickly. Leaning over to reach for her glass of wine resting on the floor of the bathroom, she lifted it to take a long pull from the glass before speaking.

"She may have mentioned me not being emotionally available," Holly said slowly, as if feeling out each word as her mouth formed them.

"Mmmhmm," Rachel urged gently, "And that may have been because…?"

Holly pulled a face and set the glass down with a loud _clink_ on the tile. She hated it when everyone else could so easily see through her. She knew she wore her emotions out in the open, where they could be torn and harmed, but she truly disliked when others called her on the fallacy of this normally awesome attribute.

It was awesome because she was drunk, and there would be a better, less egotistical way to word it in the morning after she got over her inevitable hangover.

If she even remembered any of this.

"Hols." Rachel prompted.

"Hmm?" Holly hummed in question.

"Stop spacing out and answer my question," Rachel replied; Holly could practically _see_ her rolling her eyes in frustration.

"I'm not emotionally available to Sama…"

Rachel coughed loudly and Holly stopped short, her eyes flicking to the ceiling in frustration at her friend.

"…Fine, Rebound wanted us to break up because I'm not over Gail. Happy?"

"Yes." Rachel chirped.

"About my statement, or the fact that you won't let me say her name?"

"Duh, both. Now, let's move on to the next phase of this whole conversation," Rachel continued, not giving Holly any time to get unfocused again on whatever her drunken mind found enthralling, "And don't for one second think I don't know you're sitting in your empty bathtub."

Holly sat up suddenly, her mouth gaping. Then, harshly into the phone, her voice hushed, "How do you _know _ these things?"

Rachel laughed lightly, "Oh Hols. This is why you call me and not Lisa."

Holly grumbled at the mention of Lisa, her mood darkening slightly.

"I'm taking that to mean you haven't forgiven her for being the asshat that she always is," Rachel continued.

"Oh like you haven't heard it from her," Holly shot back, swiveling sideways and bracing her knees against the long side of the tub and scrunching down until her head could rest on the opposite edge.

"Of course! I'm the middle man, always have been," Rachel remarked, then, more upbeat, "But this isn't about me, this is about you."

"About me," Holly reiterated, not sure where her friend was going.

"You. And the cop," Rachel prodded gently.

Holly brightened at that, "She called me the most wonderful person she's ever met."

Rachel's smile could be felt when she spoke, her voice softer now, "I think that should be taken as a good sign."

"I don't know, Rach, I don't want to just…" Holly sighed, frustrated.

"Hols, you're always the careful one. You plan and test and theorize. You play it safe."

Holly lifted her head up, an idea suddenly coming to mind, she was only half listening to Rachel continue rambling about her needing to take a risk, take a chance on something without planning first.

"I completely agree with you," Holly cut in. She didn't notice until after that she had cut Rachel off mid-sentence.

"You…what?" Rachel stammered. "Really? Did you hear everything I said? 'Cause I was expecting to have to work harder at this."

"No, no, I got it," Holly suddenly wanted to be off the phone as fast as possible. "There was this time, where I lied about a courier…"

"Wait, Hols, you aren't making any sense," Rachel replied, her voice thick with concern.

"I need bourbon." Holly suddenly blurted, turning her head to look around. She knew she dragged a bottle in with her glass of wine. The wine bottle was empty anyway.

"What? Wait Holly, I need you to slow down," Rachel continued, trying to halt whatever motions she could hear her friend making on the other end of the line.

Grabbing her wine glass, Holly quickly drank the rest before shifting in the tub so she was kneeling. Putting the glass back on the floor, she reached for the bottle of bourbon and pulled the lid off. Pouring it into her empty wine glass, Holly watched the amber liquid fill it up to about two-thirds before putting the bottle back on the floor.

"It's good, Rach, I've got a plan forming." Holly shrugged as she put the cover back on the bottle.

Rachel sighed, "What did I say about planning?"

"Don't worry! This will work. It has before." Climbing out of the tub, Holly picked up her wine glass and exited the bathroom, moving quickly down the stairs to the kitchen. Putting the glass on the table she went and grabbed her laptop from the living room.

"Before? Wait, Holly, I really need you to unhitch the steamroller and take a breath." Holly slowed as she returned to the kitchen. Gently putting the laptop on the table and opening it, she keyed in her password when the idle screen came to the life.

"What? Everyone else was right. You were right, Rebound was right," Holly sighed, "Even my mother was right."

Rachel snorted at that, but remained otherwise silent.

Holly took a steadying breath, even as she double clicked on the icon for a document of an old case number, "I am in deep with Gail. I didn't convey that to you or Lisa before you two met her because she and I hadn't even discussed it. I didn't expect to be blindsided by Lisa, nor have Gail do exactly what she had always warned me that she was capable of."

Taking a healthy swig from her wine glass, Holly winced as the liquor burned its way down her throat.

"But I care for her. Deeply. And she reached out finally, and even if I didn't let her say what she wanted, she more than sufficiently conveyed how she felt in only a few words and those God-damn blue eyes of hers." Holly sighed, remembering how awkward Gail was at the lab. How emotionally unguarded she was in the hallway at the precinct. It told Holly volumes that her few words only backed up.

Rachel remained silent, making sure Holly was done.

"When did Rebound break up with you?"

Holly paused, shifting to cradle her phone as she began hitting delete on her keyboard in order to input different data.

"A week ago."

"That's years in Lesbian," Rachel huffed, "Why are you only getting drunk and having bright ideas now?"

"Because you were busy all week and avoided my calls?"

"I had a massive presentation and reviews to do this week Hols, I told you." Rachel sighed, frustrated.

"I know, I'm sorry," Holly replied, her voice slightly distracted as she continued tweaking the report.

"O….kay, I see we are moving back to you," Rachel hummed teasingly, "So what is this big plan of yours?"

Well," Holly licked her lips as she deleted a few more details. Deleting the whole paragraph wouldn't hurt at this point, right? "This one time, I went to check on her, but since I rarely visit 15, my flimsy excuse when she saw me was that the courier was sick."

Rachel laughed, "Oh I bet she saw right through that one."

Holly smiled softly, her fingers stilling on the keyboard.

"Yeah," Her voice was soft, warming at memory. Shaking her head slightly to refocus, she reached for the glass and took another long drink, wincing again.

"Anyway, if got her into a private room to talk to her about what I really wanted, which kind of lead to her kissing me," Holly continued, "The point of this being, my plan entails doing basically the same thing."

"Except?" Rachel prompted slowly.

Holly grinned, feeling the effects of the bourbon as it warmed her body, "A better excuse."

* * *

That was Friday night.

Saturday she had lain in bed until 2 pm, hating the fact that there was sunlight creeping around the edges of her curtain.

Around 5 pm, she made her way into the kitchen, and with a cup of coffee in one hand, skimmed over her drunken scheme. Raising her eyebrows at her changes to the document, she couldn't help but mentally congratulate her drunken self on some really good editing, deletion, and inspired notes.

She intentionally spent the rest of the day _not_ thinking about getting Gail in a darkened interrogation room, and instead cleaned her entire apartment with all of her sexually frustrated energy.

The place was spotless by 9 pm.

She had even dusted.

At 11 pm she put a date to the scheme, and intentionally wanted it to be as soon as possible. For many reasons. Mostly before she lost her nerve.

That made it planned for Monday.

* * *

Holly awoke early on Sunday and immediately felt her stomach tighten into nerves at the thought of how wrong Monday _could _go.

She knew Gail still cared, but that was three weeks ago. As Rachel would teasingly say, that was _decades_ in Lesbian.

Tightening her sneakers, Holly grabbed her keys before heading out for a morning run. It was sunny out and slightly warm; it seemed that Spring was fighting to emerge from the deadlock of Winter finally. As she began her 5K, she began thinking over what could happen next morning.

What if Gail was out sick?

What if she couldn't find her, or she was already on patrol?

She should probably get to her before Parade. That would definitely ensure Gail's probability of being in the building.

And definitely of her being in uniform.

That thought caused her to stumble on the dirt path in the park.

Flushing in embarrassment, Holly glanced around, not noticing any nearby witnesses to her clumsiness.

Hopefully she wasn't like that when she did see her.

She hoped to catch her near a door, preferably an unlocked one, and even more preferably one without people inside.

Definitely without other people.

So much of this was about chance, much like when she had come to check on Gail during the Ford case.

Holly slowed to a stop to stretch, a suddenly thought coming to her. Maybe Rachel was right.

Maybe she just had to go in, even with all of her worries and what-ifs, and go for it. Maybe playing it safe and over-analyzing it would only make it worse. It definitely was only making her more nervous.

Gail cared about her. She knew that without a doubt. How deeply would only be found out by taking a leap. Gail wouldn't come knocking after how she left her in the hallway.

She would have to make the first move this time.

* * *

Her knees felt shaky; as if she _needed _to keep walking forward, on this excruciatingly planned out mission, just to keep her damn knees from buckling. She saw a flash of blonde hair moving through the crowd ahead of her and as she shifted the folder in her hand, her grip tight from nerves, she picked up her pace, exhaling to try to calm herself.

She hoped Gail wouldn't ask too many questions about the file.

In fact, if things went the way she wanted, Gail wouldn't ask any questions about the file.

It didn't matter anyway. She'd spent nearly four hours and two glasses of _really_ good bourbon on fudging the original file enough for it to not matter who saw the damn thing. Drunkenly doctoring up a police report was just the beginning of how she got here, however.

"Gail!" Holly called out, her stride pulling her around the corner to see the woman in question stop short.

Gail turned, her eyes flicking down and quickly up to meet Holly's eyes, taking her in. Holly could see the confusion mixed with something akin to apprehension appear on her face.

"Hi."

Everything after that one word was a blur of jargon just to get Gail in the damn room.

Everything after was worth every single drop of bourbon she had imbibed that led her here.

* * *

_fin_


End file.
